DOI: / Christian-Muslim Relations in the Anglican and Lutheran Communions

Transcription

1 Christian-Muslim Relations in the Anglican and Lutheran Communions

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3 Christian-Muslim Relations in the Anglican and Lutheran Communions Edited by David D. Grafton Joseph F. Duggan and Jason Craige Harris

4 christian-muslim relations in the anglican and lutheran communions Copyright David D. Grafton, Joseph F. Duggan, and Jason Craige Harris, Foreword Mark S. Hanson, Foreword Rowan Williams, Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 ISBN All rights reserved. First published in 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number , of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: PDF ISBN: doi: / Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. First edition:

5 From the moment he assumed the office of Archbishop of Canterbury in early 2003, Rowan Williams embraced the potential of the Building Bridges Seminar, launched by his predecessor at Lambeth Palace in January 2002, in response to the clear need for sustained efforts at bettering Christian-Muslim understanding. In fact, travel to Doha, Qatar to convene the second iteration of this initiative was the reason for one of Williams first overseas trips as archbishop. From early 2003 through mid-2012, Williams made a priority of fostering Building Bridges as a model of appreciative conversation between Christian and Muslim scholars. Under his leadership, the seminar has returned to Doha and has met as well in Washington D.C., Sarajevo, Singapore, Rome, Istanbul, and London and Canterbury. It has developed a distinctive methodology rooted in studying the Bible and Qur an together, as it has explored such themes critical to Christian-Muslim encounter as scripture and interpretation; prophecy and revelation; the common good; justice and rights; theological anthropology; science and religion; tradition and modernity; prayer; and death, resurrection, and human destiny. The seminar has borne much fruit: video-recordings of public lectures, sourcebooks of materials studied, volumes of seminar proceedings, and friendships that have led to scholarly collaboration in other arenas. In thanksgiving for this legacy of dialogical praxis and with every good wish as he takes up the post of Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge University, the editors dedicate this volume to Rowan Williams.

6 Contents Foreword by Bishop Mark S. Hanson Foreword by Archbishop Rowan Williams Preface Acknowledgments List of Contributors viii xi xvi xxv xxvii Part I Historical Encounters 1 What Dialogue? In Search of Arabic-language Christian-Muslim Conversation in the Early Islamic Century 2 Mark N. Swanson 2 The Death of Christ upon a Cross: A 19th-Century Lutheran-CMS Missionary Pamphlet 21 David D. Grafton 3 Together for the Common Good: The Joint Committee of Anglican-Al-Azhar Dialogue 40 Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad Part II Anglican-Lutheran Projects 4 Early Signs of Climate Change in Lutheran Dialogue with Islam 68 Viking Dietrich vi

7 Contents vii 5 Standing Together : A Grassroots Model of Christian-Muslim Dialogue 84 Gwynne M. Guibord 6 Renewing Our Pledge: The Episcopal Church s Engagement with Islam and Muslims 93 Lucinda Allen Mosher 7 Lutheran and Muslim Relations An Encounter 111 Michael R. Trice Conclusion: Envisioning a More Hopeful Future Christians and Muslims in Dynamic Dialogue 127 Asma Afsaruddin Suggested Bibliography 134

8 Foreword Bishop Mark S. Hanson It was only a few weeks after my election to serve as presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) that the tragedy of 9/11 occurred. The challenge of Christian-Muslim relations has deeply shaped my own calling as a bishop, and our vocation as the church in a multi-religious world. Out of the ashes of our collective grief, many of us came to the realization that we needed to understand Islam better. Countless individuals and communities in the United States and worldwide reached out with concern and in love to their Muslim neighbors. Out of tragedy a blessed opportunity was born. Exactly one decade later, on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I welcomed Sayyid Sayeed, national director for the Office of Interfaith and Community Alliances of the Islamic Society of North America, as the first Muslim speaker to address an ELCA Churchwide Assembly. Sayeed described how during the last millennium mountains of hate [and] discrimination have been built. Our job, he said, is to see those mountains of hate removed. He reminded us that no particular church, no particular religious community, no nation on earth can fight those mountains of misunderstanding alone. It is a collective responsibility, and we have already started our work in that direction. He was received by the assembly with a standing ovation. This historic event was the culmination of many years work, including the formation in 2003 of an ELCA Consultative Panel on Lutheran-Muslim Relations. However, it was also a moment of personal privilege. viii

9 Foreword ix For, you see, Sayyid had become a cherished friend. We had come to know each other in the intervening years as we joined our voices in Washington, D.C. on behalf of our respective traditions. We bolstered each other in calling upon our elected government leaders to build a moral budget, to provide affordable health care for all, and to remove obstacles to peace in the Middle East. I was able to consult with Sayyid about how we as Lutherans could most faithfully support our Muslim brothers and sisters in the face of rampant Islamophobia. Together, we participated in the formation of Shoulder to Shoulder, an interfaith coalition of over 20 national religious groups dedicated to standing in solidarity with Muslims and to speaking out against anti-muslim actions and speech in local communities and in the national discourse. For me, Sayyid s presence at the Churchwide Assembly in August 2011 was symbolic of what I believe is both the greatest challenge of and hope for inter-religious relations today: building authentic relationships. For all of us, whether we are religious leaders, scholars, or lay people, Christian-Muslim relations are our daily reality. Muslims are our neighbors, friends, colleagues, and, in some cases, family members. Our neighborhoods have become a living laboratory for engaging with the other, for loving our Muslim neighbors as ourselves. This will require more of us than mutual understanding. In an age of unprecedented religious diversity with rampant religious bias, discrimination, and hate crimes it is no longer sufficient to gain an understanding of each other s traditions, rituals, and practices, as critical as that understanding may be. Let us together have the commitment and courage to lament publicly and to reject such acts of bias and hatred, and collaborate in building a more peaceful and just world. Whether person-to-person or community-to-community, this challenging work of building relationships across religious lines lends credibility to our common witness, and instills hope for the healing of the nations. Over these same years of building stronger relationships with Muslims, the ELCA has been on a parallel journey of deepening relationship with the Episcopal Church, U.S.A. In 1999 our two church bodies entered into a full communion agreement, a mutual recognition of baptism and sharing of the Lord s Supper, and a common commitment to evangelism, witness, and service. We have already seen many fruits, and we anticipate even stronger collaborations in the years to come in the areas of ministry, advocacy, refugee resettlement, and inter-religious and global relations.

10 x Foreword What if we now considered the trajectory of these relationships in relationship to each other? In other words, is there an opportunity for us together as Christians Lutheran and Anglican to build upon what we have learned and gained through our own experiences over the years in order to enter together into deeper relationships with Muslims? I think it is a question worthy of our consideration. I think it is an opportunity worthy of our calling.

11 Foreword Archbishop Rowan Williams One of the points emerging most obviously from this valuable collection of essays by Lutheran and Anglican scholars is the rapid growth in recent years in the attention paid by Christians around the world to the challenges and opportunities posed by Christian-Muslim relations. Even just a few decades ago, the churches of the western world saw little need for theological reflection on Islam or practical engagement with Muslim communities. Over the 1980s and 1990s this situation gradually began to change, but it was particularly the events of 9/11 that created a widespread awareness among both Christians and Muslims of the pressing need for deeper mutual understanding and more positive relationships. As some of the contributions to this volume show, there is much to give thanks for in the energy, courage, and vision with which American Christians have been addressing these needs in recent years, in the United States and elsewhere; correspondingly, recent years have also seen encouraging, ground-breaking initiatives in this field led by Muslims. This trend has certainly been paralleled in my own experience. I had reflected a little on issues arising from Christian engagement with other religious traditions in some of my writing before I became Archbishop of Canterbury, and I was aware that interfaith relations would now become a major area of responsibility. However, I did not realize just how much of my time and thinking would need to be focused here. There have been some very challenging moments, for sure, but it has also been xi

12 xii Foreword an enriching and formative experience. I thank God for all that I have learned, and also for the many wonderful friends I have gained. Within the wider field of interfaith relationships, it has been inevitable that relations with Muslims have come to the fore over the past decade. This volume makes it clear that the encounter between Christians and Muslims needs to be addressed in a variety of ways and at many different levels. So, building on a number of timely initiatives taken by my predecessor, Archbishop Carey, I have found myself engaged in a range of Christian-Muslim projects with colleagues in the Church of England and around the Anglican Communion. For example, the Christian-Muslim Forum was launched in 2006 after several years of careful consultation with Muslim and Christian communities in different cities around England. The aim of the Forum has been to engage Muslims and Christians at the grassroots level over practical issues of shared concern, including both potential problems for our relationships and also opportunities for positive Muslim-Christian cooperation and contribution to the common good. The work of the Forum is led by its presidents, consisting both of religious leaders from different strands of the Muslim and Christian communities and by Muslims and Christians with expertise in areas such as youth work, women s work, education, the media, family, community, and international affairs. As well as enabling more effective communication between religious leaders (a vital resource, especially in times of crisis), the Forum has developed areas of work including: weekends bringing Muslim and Christian teenagers together ( Cross, Crescent and Cool ); opportunities for imams and pastors to learn about each other s work (and sometimes play football together); and a helpful set of ethical guidelines for the sensitive field of witness and conversion. 1 Launched in 2002, the dialogue process between the Anglican Communion and Al-Azhar al-sharif in Cairo, which is discussed at some length in this volume, has contributed in a quite different mode, more focused on the need for what one might call good diplomatic relations, which are all the more important with our increasing awareness of the worldwide dimensions of Christian-Muslim relations. Annual meetings between representatives of Al-Azhar and bishops and scholars from around the Anglican Communion have provided the framework within which two long-established religious institutions, both with global reach, have begun to get to know each other better. This process has enabled valuable student exchanges to take place between Al-Azhar

13 Foreword xiii and Anglican seminaries, and it was in the context of the 2004 annual meeting that I had the honor of being invited to address the scholars of Al-Azhar on the subject of Muslims, Christians and the One God. 2 The relationship with Al-Azhar is, of course, of special importance at this crucial time in Egypt s history. That lecture in Cairo was an attempt at theological reflection at the interface between Islam and Christianity, another important strand of work in this field, and there have been other generous invitations of this kind to address audiences in the Muslim world. 3 However, the main focus of theological dialogue has been the annual Building Bridges seminar for Christian and Muslim scholars. My first overseas visit as Archbishop of Canterbury was to Doha, Qatar, in April 2003 to lead the second Building Bridges seminar, the first having been held at Lambeth Palace in January That the invasion of Iraq was taking place not far away as we met in Qatar added to the sense that what we were doing in that seminar was not just interesting and enjoyable (though it was certainly both) but also important work, a contribution to the long task of developing a climate of intelligent and respectful understanding between the worlds of Islam and Christianity, as represented by leading scholars from both traditions. At the end of that seminar, at which we had discussed the nature and the place of scripture within our faiths, I commented that I had been encouraged by the quality of our disagreement. Inevitably, tackling so central a theological issue, we had frequently come up against points on which we differed; however, we had done so in ways that did not undermine our relationships but rather kept us open to learning from each other. It is not easy finding free weeks in your diary as Archbishop of Canterbury, but the work of Building Bridges has been both a priority and a joy year by year. Over the years we have developed something of a fellowship of scholars, many returning year after year for our three-day seminars and coming to know, respect, and indeed love one another as dear friends. We have heard some excellent lectures over the years (on topics such as prophecy, human rights, interpretation, prayer, tradition and modernity, and much else), but we have perhaps learned most from the core Building Bridges method of studying biblical and qur anic texts in small groups. In these discussions we have not just gathered information about each other s scriptures and the history of their interpretation, valuable though that might be; as I have more than once put it, when we listen carefully to someone reading their own sacred scripture and speaking of what it means, we see their face turned toward God, and that transforms

14 xiv Foreword our relationships. We may not have made a great deal happen observably or quantifiably in the world around us, but I trust that in learning from each other as we have done over the years (and the investment of time is essential) we have modeled a promising approach to Christian- Muslim relationships, which will bear fruit for years to come. My experience in Building Bridges and in other contexts has underlined that in addition to developing a range of different approaches to engaging positively with Muslim communities, we also need careful Christian theological work to undergird and inform what we are doing in this field. This volume is very welcome both for its account of much that is encouraging in Christian practice but also for the light that it sheds on the ways in which Christians at different times and in different contexts have made theological sense of their encounter with Islam. That work must continue, and if some Christian approaches from the past now strike us as unsatisfactory, this points us to the continuing task of doing justice both to what is given to us in our own tradition and to all that we experience and learn in our relationships with Muslims. The theological training and ministerial formation that we provide for our future ministers must pay adequate attention to these needs. My sincere thanks go to the editors of this volume and all the contributors for their very generous gesture in dedicating it to me. I am delighted that the wording of the dedication draws attention to Building Bridges, and I take this as an affirmation of the efforts of all those with whom I have had the great pleasure of working in the course of many Building Bridges seminars. I hope that these essays, which are a very welcome expression of Anglican-Lutheran cooperation in this crucial field, will be widely read and will prompt many to think more deeply and also to commit themselves more fully to the transforming work of Christian- Muslim relations. Notes 1 For more information, see 2 Published in The Journal of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 16, no. 2 (2005); see also, archbishops-address-at-al-azhar-al-sharif-cairo (accessed March 9, 2013). For more information on the Anglican Al-Azhar Dialogue, see, nifcon.anglicancommunion.org/work/dialogues/al_ahzar/index (accessed March 9, 2013).

15 Foreword xv 3 These include the address, What Is Christianity? given at the International Islamic University in Islamabad, Pakistan on November 23, 2005 (see, (accessed March 9, 2013) and How Does God Reveal Himself? A Christian Perspective, a lecture given at the World Islamic Call Society Campus, Tripoli, Libya on January 29, 2009 (see, articles.php/833/how-does-god-reveal-himself-a-christian-perspective) (accessed March 9, 2013).

16 Preface Abstract: The editors narrate the historical, social, and cultural contexts in which this volume appears, marking commemorations of 9/11 and the intensified search for inter-religious understanding as significant. They explain the contributions of each chapter, after briefly charting the historical contours of Christian interactions and dialogues with Muslims. The tenth anniversary of 9/11/2001 was observed with great solemnity throughout the United States, as was only fitting. Commemorations marking the date took place with moving ceremonies at Ground Zero, at the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It was a day that was met with mixed emotions: very real personal and communal grief, anger, and determined resilience, as well as religious consolation and supplication. Even after ten years, emotions were still amazingly raw. It was a day simply to be and grieve over what was lost, and what is and what could still come. Aside from the national events that were publicized and televised, the more significant private commemorations and reflections took place away from the limelight of the mainstream media and were, in many ways, more important. These moments were shared among those directly and indelibly affected, who survived or who lost loved ones, friends, and colleagues. In addition, many local civic and religious communities gathered to mark these events within their own communities, to provide further opportunities for reflection and healing. The anniversary xvi

17 Preface xvii became a suitable time to engage in the ongoing national conversations about the reality of racial and religious profiling, strategies for combating Muslim extremism, the continued execution of two foreign wars in Muslim-majority countries, as well as concerns over the perceived inherent un-american-ness of Islam. The Society of Anglican and Lutheran Theologians (SALT) is an informal network of individuals from the Anglican and Lutheran traditions who gather for ongoing theological inquiry. Its annual gathering has brought together Lutheran and Anglican scholars and pastors to discuss theological and historical questions of concern to members of both traditions for over two decades. The goal of SALT s annual meeting has always been to weave together the theological strengths of Anglican and Lutheran theologies that can be used to address timely topics. The 2011 program, which took place during November in San Francisco, was like so many other gatherings dedicated to the recognition of the tenth anniversary of 9/11. The 2011 SALT meeting, organized and planned by Joseph F. Duggan, founder of Postcolonial Networks, an organization that promotes global justice and transnational, multireligious scholarship, was intended to devote specific attention to the role of Anglican and Lutheran thinking on and practice of Christian-Muslim relationships. The Society desired to learn from the investment of Lutheran perspectives in Christian Muslim relations through the work of two ELCA Islamicists: Mark N. Swanson, the Harold S. Vogelaar Professor of Christian-Muslim Studies and Interfaith Relations and associate director of the Center of Christian Muslim Engagement for Peace and Justice at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, and David D. Grafton, Associate Professor of Islamic studies and Christian-Muslim Relations at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. In addition, SALT invited Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Professor of the History of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at the Center for Muslim Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, and the Rev. Gwynne Guibord, director of the Guibord Center, St. John s Cathedral, Los Angeles, to reflect on the Anglican experience and practice of Christian Muslim relationships. Each was asked to present a paper on a specific topic to be followed by discussion. The depth and quality of the conversations at SALT 2011 indicated that there was opportunity to publicize more widely the thinking and activity of these two Protestant traditions in the area of Christian-Muslim relations. The hope was that such an endeavor would further encourage other religious organizations to renew themselves to similar relational

18 xviii Preface priorities. Despite the surplus of publications on Islam since 9/11 (some are extremely well researched and written while others suffer from the maladies of ideological and political rhetoric), the decision was made to expand the initial SALT 2011 meeting into a book project. Using the experience and strategies of Postcolonial Networks it was determined that there would be significant value in developing the four papers into a publication. This work would address a gap in the literature on Christian Muslim relations. It would be useful at this point to point out this gap briefly. North American denominations have sent Christian missionaries abroad to Muslim countries since the early 19th century. Many of these missionaries spilt a great deal of ink writing back to their constituencies about the historic relationship between Christianity and Islam from a variety of theological positions polemical and dialogical. American 4 Christian communities received epistles and reports of the work being done on their behalf among Muslims in wonderfully exotic places far away, which contributed to an American Orientalist view of Islam. 5 In this context, the Christian-Muslim encounter was always assumed to be a matter for foreign missions, something that took place over there and among those people. Never mind that Muslims had been on the American continent since the first days of the Middle Passage of the African slave trade, and that the variety of Muslim communities increased in the United States with the slow but steady arrival of immigrants from the Ottoman Empire and the Indian subcontinent at the end of the 19th century through the first third of the 20th century. 6 Apparently their numbers or presence was not yet public enough to generate interest. This changed dramatically with the Iranian Revolution in Suddenly, Americans wanted to know who Muslims were and why they were so angry. As Lucinda Allen Mosher notes in her chapter in this book, it was at the 66th General Convention of the Episcopal Church, U.S.A. in 1979 that the church suddenly recognized an awareness of the need to engage with Muslims within the United States. The first significant thinking about Islam within American church circles after the Iranian Revolution came in 1983 with the publication of Christian-Muslim Relations: An Introduction For Christians in the United States of America by R. Marston Speight. Speight, an ordained United Methodist pastor and former missionary in North Africa, served as the director of the Office on Christian-Muslim Relations of the National Council of Churches from the office s inception in 1979 until 1992.

19 Preface xix Throughout the early 1980s the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. demonstrated a leading role in thinking about Christian Muslim relationships through the publication of The Islamic Impact by Byron Haines and Yvonne Haddad (1984). This was followed by Christians and Muslims Together: An Exploration By Presbyterians by Haines and Frank L. Cooley (1987). That same year, Yvonne Haddad and Adair T. Lummis published Islamic Values in the United States: A Comparative Study. In 1989, Elias D. Mallon, who was then chair of the Muslim-Roman Catholic Dialogue in the archdiocese of New York, published Neighbors: Muslims in North America. Finally, Haddad s The Muslims of America (1991) completed a decade of research on the Muslim community in the United States that had now become more than a curiosity. Other American Christian thought on Islam during this time took the form of traditional concern for evangelism among Muslims abroad, shoring up American Christian attitudes of supremacy. These publications included Phil Parshall s New Paths in Muslim Evangelism: Evangelical Approaches to Contextualization (1980) and Bridges to Islam: A Christian Perspective on Folk Islam (1983), Bill Musk s The Unseen Face of Islam: Sharing the Gospel with Ordinary Muslims (1989) and Touching the Soul of Islam: Sharing the Gospel in Muslim Cultures (1995), and finally, Dudley Woodbury s Muslims and Christians on the Emmaus Road (1989). Two Anglican and Lutheran responses that tended toward the dialogical model of Christian Muslim relationships included the former Church Missionary Society missionary Colin Chapman s Cross and Crescent: Responding to the Challenge of Islam (1995), and the former director of the Division for Global Mission of the ELCA, Mark Thomsen s The Word and the Way of the Cross: Christian Witness Among Muslim and Buddhist People (1993). The vast majority of publications on Islam throughout the 80s and 90s in the United States, however, concentrated on political Islam abroad, keeping in mind the Iranian Revolution and the Lebanese Civil War. While the 1991 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center did generate further interest in Islam, this public concern was short lived and focused almost exclusively upon the issues of the Middle East. Once again, the interest in Islam was directed over there. This all changed with the September 11 terrorist attacks. Since 2001, a myriad of publications on Islam and Muslims in America have been published in print or on the Internet. Most of these works have focused on Islamic extremism and terrorism. Significant amounts

20 xx Preface of energy were spent addressing the fears of sleeper cells of Muslim terrorists living in our midst. This led U.S. military and political analysts to call for increased security measures and policies. In response to increasing fear and a warranted concern over the welfare of religious minorities (including Sikhs, often mislabeled as Islamic 4 ) or immigrant Muslim communities within the United States, several of the mainstream denominations stepped up their initiatives that had been dormant for more than 20 years. They began to produce programs and studies aimed at helping their members engage and better understand American Muslim communities. While a number of very good denominational study guides were produced during this time period, which are currently available online, one must go back to the 1980s to find published studies or reflections on Christian-Muslim relations within the United States. 5 In reflecting on the scarcity of published Lutheran and Anglican reflection on Christian Muslim encounters, the organizers of SALT 2011 determined that it would be important to pursue a collection of works dealing with both the ongoing research about the historic Christian Muslim encounter, as well as the activity of Lutherans and Anglicans in relationship with Muslims in the United States and abroad. Thus, the editors invited a number of participants to expand the original four papers into seven chapters that are divided into two sections: Historical Encounters and Anglican-Lutheran Projects. Mark N. Swanson s What Dialogue? In Search of Arabic-language Christian-Muslim Conversation in the Early Islamic Centuries (Chapter 1) provides the appropriate starting point for this book. Swanson introduces the readers to his ongoing research in Arabic Christian literature and the possible opportunities for dialogue with Islam. He examines the earliest extant piece of Arabic Christian literature, On the Triune Nature of God (8th century), as part of a dialogue between communities that extends over generations. The focus in this early literature, as Swanson argues, centered upon the primary theological issues that Christians and Muslims have raised and will continue to raise by virtue of their respective beliefs: the unity and tri-unity of God, and the personhood of Jesus as either Son or Prophet (see Q 4:171; 5:116, respectively). This important dialogue on these central theological issues continues. In On the Death of Christ upon a Cross: A 19th Century Lutheran- Anglican Missionary Tract, David D. Grafton (Chapter 2) picks up both the ongoing historical encounter, as well as the third important

21 Preface xxi theological issue faced in historical Christian-Muslim dialogue that of the crucifixion of Jesus (Q 4:157 8). Grafton moves the Christian-Muslim encounter up to the 19th century, the apex of the Protestant missionary age, where Lutherans and Anglicans worked together in unique ways as partners to evangelize Muslims in the Ottoman Empire and the Indian subcontinent. Focusing upon the attempted publication of a missionary tract on the crucifixion, Grafton laments that Christian witness to the faith has often included diatribes against Islam, which continue even to the present. Where once-antagonists utilized the 19th-century genre of tract literature they now use 21st-century electronic social media. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad (Chapter 3) provides the final chapter of the historical segment. Together for the Common Good: The Joint Committee of Anglican-Al-Azhar Dialogue provides an overview of the previous work of Anglican and Egyptian Sunni Muslim dialogue. Whereas the previous chapters focus on the theological and scriptural issues at the core of Christian-Muslim encounter, Haddad reminds us that the social-political context is a critical factor in any relationship. Commencing with the 1952 Free Officers Revolution, Haddad examines the role of the Coptic community vis-à-vis Nasr s Egypt, and the role of the Egyptian Anglican community in facilitating dialogue between Al-Azhar and the Church of England. From the ongoing research about Christian-Muslim relations, the book moves to the specific activity of several Anglican or Lutheran projects. Viking Dietrich, an American Lutheran who worked with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) in Senegal, reflects on Early Signs of Climate Change in Lutheran Dialogue with Islam (Chapter 4). Utilizing the experience of the American Lutheran Church s missionary work among the Fulbe in the West African Saheel during the drought of the 1970s, Dietrich provides a rich narrative on the establishment of the Galle Nanondiral Community Center and its impact on Christian Muslim relations in Senegal. He notes that when Christians and Muslims work together to face the challenges of local conditions ongoing avenues for dialogue and relationship are opened. Gwynne M. Guibord s Standing Together: A Grassroots Model of Christian-Muslim Dialogue (Chapter 5) is an important first-hand account of the challenges of overcoming the deep-seated fears and prejudices of 9/11 in Southern California. This chapter addresses the need for projects that facilitate real human relationships between actual people of diverse faith traditions and their communities. In response to hate

22 xxii Preface crimes against American Muslims after 9/11, Guibord, an American Episcopal priest, developed a program to pair congregations with mosques and thereby create direct relationships to foster opportunities for local ongoing conversations and cooperation. The final two chapters of the book provide important information on the Episcopal Church and the ELCA s formal responses to the 2007 Muslim Common Word document ( Lucinda Allen Mosher (Chapter 6) reviews her work on the 2008 Renewing Our Pledge through the Episcopal Church s Office of Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations. Mosher places this Episcopal response within the framework of both Roman Catholic and American Protestant responses. The driving force of the chapter, however, raises the question that while the Episcopal Church has adopted its own Theological Statement on Interreligious Relations, there is currently no distinctly Episcopal guide to Christian-Muslim relations. What would that look like, she asks? Michael R. Trice, who served as the ELCA s Associate Director for Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations, provides a companion narrative to Mosher s. Trice s Lutheran and Muslim Relations An Encounter (Chapter 7) explores a Lutheran response to the Muslim neighbor using the repetitive refrain of encounter. Like the previous chapters in this section, the focus for Trice is on real-life encounters with real people who need to be committed arbiters of peace in the face of social and political pressures. A book of this historical significance would not be complete without the response of a Muslim scholar. We are fortunate to have had Asma Afsaruddin, Professor of Islamic Studies at Indiana University, offer a concluding word. Afsaruddin has been directly involved with the Archbishop of Canterbury s Building Bridges program. She provides encouragement in the face of a predominantly pessimistic clash of civilizations model proposed by several influential thinkers within the United States, including the eminent Bernard Lewis. Afsaruddin notes that the book reflects the reality of Episcopal and Lutheran practitioners who have worked hard in the past and continue to strive today to engage the Islamic tradition and Muslim interlocutors in a spirit of genuine spiritual and intellectual camaraderie and reverence for the sacred in the other s tradition. These are words of considerable praise and promise. Building on Afsaruddin s words of hope and promise, this work includes a bibliography and resource list of published works, websites, and statements by the religious organizations and meetings reviewed in

23 Preface xxiii this book. While one could not possibly include a complete listing of relevant works on Islam or the history and politics of Christian-Muslim relations, these resources are intended to provide a primer for those interested in the research about and activity of Lutherans and Anglicans, their constituencies, and other religious communities in Christian- Muslim relations. The listing is aimed to be practical and accessible to lay religious audiences. Finally, we return to the beginning, to the book s two forewords, that of the ELCA s Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Rowan Williams. Their leadership at key moments in both the Anglican Communion and within the ELCA and Lutheran World Federation has provided important role models for these two ecclesiastical bodies. In the words that Bishop Hanson offers in his preface, out of tragedy a blessed opportunity was born ; out of 9/11 there did emerge enhanced relationships between Muslims and Christians. The editors of this volume are extremely thankful to Bishop Hanson and Archbishop Williams for their willingness to participate in and support this publication and its underlying cause. Notes 1 Editorial note: throughout the book, American or America refers to the more specific U.S. American or U.S. America designations. We recognize broader uses of American and America to refer to the peoples and lands of the Americas and therefore find it necessary to acknowledge our more specified uses mainly for the purposes of convenience and reading ease. 2 See Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage, 1994) and Timothy Marr, The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 3 See Edward E. Curtis IV, Muslims in America: A Short History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), and Sylviane A. Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (New York: NYU Press, 1998). 4 Editorial note: an acknowledgment that Sikhs are often mistaken for Muslims, that Sikhs are at times subjected to violence because of their perceived Muslim identity, is not an endorsement of violence against Muslims. Yes, it is a recognition of Sikh and Muslim difference, erased by orientalist and Islamophobic fantasies, but it goes far beyond that, to the very purpose of those fantasies. If anti-muslim hate were the only motivating factor, the absence of misapplied Muslim association would mean that Sikhs

24 xxiv Preface 5 would be less victimized by western extremist violence. This, however, is unlikely. Imprecise Muslim identification is merely one logic and practice by which western prejudice the deeper problem is justified and enacted against perceived non-westerners. It obscures religious distinctions through creating a false image of Islam as terror that simultaneously encodes racial difference (here, brown skin, but, generally, non-white, non-christian skin) as terror all and only brown people as Muslim, all and only brown (Muslim) people as extremists, all and only brown (Muslim) people as needing violent subduing. Discrimination thereby sings in racial, religious, and cultural tones. Therefore, only to disassociate Sikhs and Muslims misses the point and may, in fact, reproduce the problem. That disassociation only constitutes a holistic intervention when it aims to eradicate the underlying symbolic order. For examples of several of these study guides see, for example, the ELCA s Christian-Muslim Talking Points ( Our-Three-Expressions/Churchwide-Organization/Office-of-the-Presiding- Bishop/Ecumenical-and-Inter-Religious-Relations/Inter-Religious-Relations/ Christian-Muslim-Relations/Christian-Muslim-Talking-Points.aspx, accessed March 9, 2013) and The Interfaith Policy Statement of the National Council of Churches ( html, accessed March 9, 2013), and the PC-USA s Toward an Understanding of Christian-Muslim Relations ( interfaithrelations/pdf/toward_an_understanding_of_christian-muslim_ relations.pdf, accessed March 9, 2013).

25 Acknowledgments Christian-Muslim Relations in the Lutheran and Anglican Communions: Historical Encounters and Contemporary Projects has been made available to readers through the generous and committed efforts of many people. The editors and contributors are very grateful to the Society of Anglican and Lutheran Theologians for hosting the meeting Christian-Muslim Relations in the Lutheran-Anglican Communions on the Tenth Anniversary of 9/11 convening November 17 18, 2011 that generated this book. Since the late 1990s SALT has held meetings of interest for Anglican and Lutheran theologians. SALT s annual meetings are known and cherished for their welcome respite from conventional scholarly gatherings, in the way they encourage in-depth engagement through lengthy and friendly conversations that follow the presentation of each paper. Each year for two days people meet to share provocative ideas, prayer, and an evening meal. See SALT s website for information on future meetings, The 2011 SALT meeting was held at Westmont College Urban House in San Francisco, where those who gathered received a warm welcome from Brad Berky, director and faculty internship coordinator. We thank Rusty Springer, a family friend of Joseph F. Duggan, who introduced us to the Westmont Urban House. We are grateful to Postcolonial Networks for its catalyzing work. Its founder, Joseph F. Duggan, also the SALT 2011 program planner, identified the need for these tenth-anniversary conversations and the gap in the literature that this edited volume xxv

26 xxvi Acknowledgments seeks to address. See Postcolonial Networks website for further information, David Grafton, Gwynne Guibord, Yvonne Haddad, and Mark Swanson, the original meeting contributors, alongside additional postmeeting contributors, generously and diligently developed their papers for publication to form this collection. The original contributors are grateful to those who generously joined the project and for the way these scholars added to the fullness of the work readers receive. We are grateful to Viking Dietrich, Lucinda Allen Mosher, and Michael R. Trice. David Grafton patiently pulled together the manuscript through his work with contributors to write a compelling book proposal. Jason Craige Harris, Strategic Operations Leader at Postcolonial Networks, copyedited the manuscript with meticulous attention to detail and contributors voices. The project has been strengthened with a response from Asma Afsaruddin, chair and professor of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University. The editors are humbled by the enthusiastic support of retired Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and the Rt. Rev. Mark S. Hanson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, for their inspiring words and commitment to Christian- Muslim relations in the Anglican and Lutheran Communions. Behind the scenes, the project materialized through the supportive coordination and communications roles of the Rt. Rev. Laurie Green, retired bishop of the Church of England; the Rev. Toby Howarth, secretary for interreligious affairs for the Church of England; Kathryn Lohre, president of the National Council of Churches and director of ecumenical and interreligious relations for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; the Rev. David Marshall, academic director of the Building Bridges Seminar; and Tess Young, administrative assistant at Lambeth Palace. Burke Gerstenschlager, our editor at Palgrave Macmillan, has been consistently enthusiastic about our project and has always responded to our inquiries in a timely manner. Finally, we thank our readers who will continue to engage the work of positive Christian-Muslim relations in their contexts around the world.

27 List of Contributors Asma Afsaruddin is Chair and Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University. Viking Dietrich was General Secretary for Interdenominational Joint Christian Ministry in West Africa ( ). Joseph F. Duggan is Founder of Postcolonial Networks and co-editor of Palgrave Macmillan s Postcolonialism and Religions series. David D. Grafton is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations at the Lutheran Theological Seminary of Philadelphia. Gwynne M. Guibord is Founder and President of the Guibord Center. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad is Professor of History of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at the Center for Muslim- Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. Jason Craige Harris is Strategic Operations Leader at Postcolonial Networks. Lucinda Allen Mosher is Faculty Associate in Interfaith Studies at Hartford Seminary. Mark N. Swanson is Harold S. Vogelaar Professor of Christian-Muslim Studies and Interfaith Relations at the Lutheran School of Theology of Chicago. Michael R. Trice is Assistant Dean of Ecumenical and Inter-Religious Relations at Seattle University. xxvii

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